Providing TEPCO and its regulator with confidence to restart nuclear reactors.

Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station comprises seven boiling water reactor units, generating nearly 8 GW of electricity a year. Following the Niigata Chuetsu-Oki Earthquake, the plant was safely shut down. To obtain permission to restart operations from Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), our client needed to conduct inspection and equipment restoration work. The regulator, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) in METI, also required that TEPCO perform a voluntary safety evaluation of the current inspection and restoration work.

We were entrusted to perform the technical audit services needed to assess the suitability of TEPCO’s inspection and restoration work. We broke this work down into:

• two different examinations

• a review of the documentation and procedures for the inspection and restoration work at the site

• technical audits to assess whether the inspection and restoration work complied with the procedures.